Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and the Virunga Massif, a volcanic range that straddles Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to the world’s two populations of mountain gorillas. Most are found on the slopes of three of the dormant volcanoes: Karisimbi, Mikeno, and Visoke. The vegetation is very dense at the bottom of the mountains, becoming more sparse at higher elevations. The forests where the mountain gorillas live are often cloudy, misty and cold. It is this climatic condition that gave Diane Fossey the name for her book on mountain gorillas: Gorillas in the Mist. It has also become a play on words that vendors screen on the backs of souvenir t shirts: Mzungu in the Mist. When we asked what this meant, one fellow hesitantly told us, “It means white people in the mist.”
The mountain gorilla is primarily a gentle, non aggressive herbivore. The majority of its diet consists of leaves, shoots and stems. Adult males eat 65 -75 pounds of vegetation a day. Females consume 30 - 40 pounds. This means that a good deal of each gorilla day is spent in moving from place to place, foraging for food. Finding a group is no easy task, which is why former poachers are now employed as gorilla trackers. A salaried tracker can enough to feed and care for his own families and reduces, but does not eliminate, threats to gorillas from poachers. It is these trackers who stay with a particular group all day long. At sunset, the trackers put a GPS device on the ground where they leave the gorillas for the night, and then before sunrise, they begin tracking the group from their last known location. This system makes it possible for national park guides and trackers to bring visitors to the gorillas as they rest from their early morning foraging before moving off in an hour or two to resume eating.
We arrived at Parc des Volcans, Rwanda and were anxiously awaiting our gorilla group assignment.On the first day, we were assigned Amahoro Group. They live on the forested slopes between Visoke Volcano and Sabinyo. We met with our park guide Edward, who told us a bit about Amahoro. He explained how we should behave with the gorillas (no talking, do not try to touch them, if you are touched or grabbed be very still and do not react) and said would need to hike about two to two and a half hours to reach them. We grabbed our packs, got in our vehicle, and drove about 30 minutes to the trail head.
As of late 2008, there were 14 habituated family groups of gorillas in the park. Only 7 of these are available for tracking by the public. A $750.00 permit buys the trekker one hour with the gorillas. The group will be visited only one time during the day.
Indeed treks to reach our assigned groups were as strenuous as advertised. From a trail head at the end of a village, we hiked up through terraced fields of wheat, barley, squash and pyrethrum until we reached the park boundary. There, we were met by two trackers assigned to take us to the gorillas. In our trip literature we understood we would be allowed no closer than 7 m (22 feet) to the gorillas. Pam brought binoculars on our first hike, and I was confident in the zoom on our video camera. Reaching the Amahoro group required us to hike first up one mountain, then through a bamboo forest, down the other side of the mountain through jungle filled with stinging nettles. From a valley we hiked up another mountain and half way down to where the group was resting. We were instructed to leave our packs with our porters (men from the local village we hired to carry our packs) and follow Edward our guide.
We walked into a junglish clearing and were immediately face to face with our gorillas. Five feet away from one of the young males, we watched in awe as he sat calmly stripping and eating wild celery. We were stunned. I mean stunned like hardly breathing; like tearing up; like speechless, shaking. The gorillas are beautiful. They are magnificent and majestic. The young ones--3 to 6 years old act just like little kids. They spend much of their time chasing one another, playing, and climbing on trees and adults. The dominant silverback (head of the group) is generally calm and spends most of his time sleeping or eating. He can be a fierce defender of his family, but never fights just to defend territory. The females with babies are loving, gentle, and devoted mothers. Forget the binoculars! For the next hour we were maneuvered into viewing positions as close as 7-10 feet from various individuals.
Amahoro group has 18 members: 3 silverbacks (only 1 is dominant, and 1, Kajoliti is one-handed due to being caught in a poacher’s snare), 2 blackbacks (males who haven’t reached sexual maturity), 5 adult females, 2 subadult males, 2 juveniles and 5 babies. Our alloted hour was so otherworldly that I felt suspended in time. We stood and moved about on a floor three or four feet deep in springy jungle vines and branches. Strangely, I never felt unstable. At one point as we intently watched a group of juveniles, one of the trackers called, “Watch out! Move back” and the silverback pushed through the group brushing against several of us. When time was up the trackers called to us and we filed reverently back to our waiting porters.
Reality set in as we trudged back up the steep trail and slowly worked our way toward the terraced fields and finally, our vehicle. I had to admit to Pam that night that I was sore and tired. She said, “I’m sure we will have an easier go tomorrow. Our hike will have to be shorter because of our drive to Kigali.” But a shorter hike was not in the cards. In the morning we were assigned Susa group. They tend to inhabit altitudes of 9,000-10,000 feet on the middle-level slopes of the largest volcano--Karisimbi (14,787'). This group is considered the most strenuous to track.
Susa is the largest of the tourist groups with 36 members at the time of our visit. It is the only group to claim two sets of twins. Twins are normally too stressful for a mother to manage and generally one of the pair is abandoned. The drive to the trail head that second day took a full hour. The trek to get to the gorillas was three hours one way, but we had “only” to go up one mountain and half down another rather than the up and down, up and down of the day before. There were few stinging nettles this time which was a relief. Once again we left our packs with the porters and followed the trackers into an area dense with vines and trees. We stopped, I looked down and discovered we were right in front of a mother and her tiny, ten week old baby. Such affection and tenderness was expressed between the two, our hearts were in our throats. Although big silverbacks seem to be a large draw for most trekkers, Pam and I were mesmerized by the mother and her baby. We could have stayed with her for hours. Two juveniles directly above us were playing “king of the hill.” They wrestled and mouthed one another, rolling, and pushing, and chasing. Finally, one guy gave the other a large shove which sent the loser somersaulting down a hill. The winner watched, stood tall, and slapped his chest three or four times with resounding smacks. When our hour was up and we were filing past a young gorilla, he suddenly picked up a bunch of leaves, waved them around, and put them on his head like feathers... almost as if he was showing us how clever and cute he was. Indeed.
Again the trek back to our vehicle was long and arduous. By afternoon, the jungle trails seem to get more slippery and rocky. This is probably more a function of how tired we were than of an actual change in trail conditions. In three hours we were back at the trailhead. We thanked and paid our porters, said good-bye to our guide, and rumbled off for the long drive to Kigali.
In a few hours it began to rain which made the mountain road more slick and rutted than ever. I wondered how long each vehicle could go before breaking down. I got my answer as our vehicle came to a grinding halt about 40 k from Kigali. After removing a front tire and probing the front transmission, it was decided that the vehicle was inoperable and a tow truck was summoned from Kigali. We arrived in the city about 8 o'clock--tired and hungry. We got checked in and moved to our rooms. Linda and Paul arranged for a table for our dinner. We had wine, toasted, ate, and then crawled off to bed. The next day all of us were scheduled for afternoon departures for the USA (or in Kathy’s case for Kenya). In the morning we had a scheduled visit to the Kigali Memorial Centre and Genocide Museum.
You will find gorilla pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtnpostpics/sets/
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